Ferrucci Qualifies Just Outside the Fast 12

Lexington, OH (July 27, 2019) – Dale Coyne Racing driver Santino Ferrucci came up less than three hundredths of a second from making it into Round 2 of qualifying on Saturday and had to settle for 14th place on the starting grid for Sunday’s Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio.

After a strong performance in the morning practice session, in which he ended up fifth quickest, Ferrucci was looking good early on in his Group 2, Round 1 of qualifying.

The driver of the #19 Cly-Del Manufacturing entry spent most of the 10-minute session in the top six and was sitting third in his qualifying group before heading to pit lane for a fresh set of Firestone Alternate tires (reds) in the final minutes.

Ferrucci went on to register his fastest lap of the session on his seventh and final lap with a time of 1:05.7588. However, moving on to the second round of qualifying was not meant to be for the rookie who ended up seventh in his group, a mere 0.0294 seconds from the top six.

“At this Mid-Ohio track everyone is so close. We just missed it by a bit with our #19 Cly-Del Manufacturing Honda. Unfortunately, we lost a little bit of time everywhere around the track. Also, being a rookie here and not having the chance to really run the Reds yesterday in practice 2 (due to red flags) kind of hurt us today. Had we had more time with them, we would have known to put a little more front wing in it,” explained Ferrucci. “That said, we’ve started there before, and we’ve made some good things happen, so we’ll have to do it again.”

Ferrucci enters his 17th NTT IndyCar Series race sitting second in the Rookie of the Year standings and 12th in the overall driver Championship with 241 points.